


Requiescat

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Insults against Will's fashion sense, M/M, Oscar Wilde - Freeform, Poetry, Sibling Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 22:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12714081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: A man dressed as Oscar Wilde rescues Will from the worst Halloween of his life.---"The choice of costume may indeed reveal as much as the apparent lack of one.""I guess. Do you have a lot in common with a guy whose dysfunctional love affair got him thrown in jail?"





	Requiescat

**Author's Note:**

> Repost of a deleted fic from last Halloween.

_"Peace, peace, she cannot hear_  
_Lyre or sonnet,_  
_All my life's buried here,_  
_Heap earth upon it."_

\- O. Wilde

\---

Will was elbowing away from the bar and had just had most of his whiskey spilled on him when a man dressed as George Washington pointed at him and laughed.

"Waitaminute, I got this: you're Paul Bunyan!"  
  
Will stared at the man, stared down at his plaid flannel shirt and then called it: this was, by far, the worst Halloween of his life.

For a start, he'd let Beverly set him up on a blind date. The date cancelled on him fifteen minutes _after_ he'd arrived at the wine bar of her choice. The wine bar was hosting a Halloween party. A themed Halloween party.

Wiping at his shirt and winding his way through the throngs of cabernet-drinking Cleopatras and savignon-swilling Stalins, Will determined to find a quiet corner, polish off whatever was left of his drink and sulk off home.

The stranger seemed to materialise before him from thin air and Will stopped in his tracks. Despite the din, Will heard every word of his opening line, spoken as if Will had been expecting it. 

"Illusion may be the first of all pleasures, but it's not one in which you've chosen to partake, I see."

Will blinked at him.

"I don't like Halloween parties. I didn't think I was coming to one."  
  
"And now that you are here your lack of disguise has been mistaken for one regardless."

Will sighed. The stranger had apparently witnessed him being taken for a fictional lumberjack. He eyed the man's costume: a long coat cut from moss-colored velvet; a knotted silk cravat; a buttonhole set with a pale green carnation. Taken together with the smoothly spoken aphorism, recognition snapped into place in Will's head.

"And you're supposed to be ... Oscar Wilde?"

The man's mouth curved into a faint smirk that Will felt like a secret handshake, or the acknowledgement of a private passcode.

"For the evening, yes. Hannibal Lecter, more commonly."

Will shook the extended hand. A heavy emerald ring sat on one of the fingers and the cold touch of gold was in stark contrast to Hannibal's warm grip.

"Will Graham."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Will. May I replace your spilled drink?" Hannibal nodded towards a Genghis Khan who was holding court nearby. "I'm here on the owner's invitation. I'm sure he'll gladly compensate you for a beverage so rudely displaced."

"You really don't— I was just going to drink this and go."

But even as he said it, Will was inexplicably trailing Hannibal back towards to the bar. He tried not to think too much about his lackluster protest at being bought a drink by a guy. Or why Hannibal seemed to know which whiskey Will had been drinking prior to the spill. Will watched him as he ordered.

"Yours doesn't look like a costume."  
  
"What does it look like?"  
  
"It looks... real." 

Hannibal handed Will his glass, took up his own, then briefly fussed over the edge of one velvet cuff.

"My tailor was admittedly bemused. But I believe in the end she enjoyed the challenge. Most people here aspire to mere pageantry."

"And you're after a— what? A transformation, right?"

"Might we say a revelation?"

"An illusion so perfect it reveals," Will heard himself mutter, which summoned a nod and another small, pleased smile from Hannibal.

Will was once again drifting behind Hannibal, who was deftly negotiating the crowds with friendly if fleeting small talk. He seemed to know half the people in the place. They arrived and settled in a candlelit corner booth. The noise around them faded back somewhat, but Will still wondered how Hannibal's voice managed to carry so well above it all.

"The choice of costume may indeed reveal as much as the apparent lack of one."

"I guess. Do you have a lot in common with a guy whose dysfunctional love affair got him thrown in jail?"

"You know something of Wilde's biography then."

"I read a few things about him when I was a kid. One of the high schools I went to put on a terrible version of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'."

"To which you contributed?"  
  
Will shook his head. "Acting's not my thing. You didn't answer my question by the way."

"It would be fair to say I've succumbed to availability bias. I recently saw a production of 'An Ideal Husband' and have been revisiting Wilde's essays and lectures as a result. He happened to be at the forefront of my mind."

"That's not much of a revelation." Will sipped his whiskey and wondered why he was being short-changed on the answer.

"It is to Wilde's credit that, given a life bookended by personal tragedies, the man who lives on in history is indistinguishable from his art. His personal losses do not define him."

"Maybe. Bookended?"

"Wilde's younger sister Isola died a few weeks short of her tenth birthday. Claimed by a fever in the heart of winter. Wilde had been a very small child himself. Some say Isola's ghost haunted his writing, far beyond the few lines of verse he penned in her memory."

Will swallowed back a sudden ache in his throat. He had fixed on Hannibal's face while he listened but now seemed to see through it: the tiny coffin carried through the bitter snows, the procession of black-clad mourners. Hannibal lowered his eyes and Will was back in the bar, staring at the way candlelight settled into his sharp features.

The moment stretched before Hannibal spoke again, more quietly than before.  
  
"After his passing, Wilde's friends found amongst his meagre possessions an envelope containing locks of Isola's golden hair."

"What was the poem?"

"The one written in her memory?"

Will nodded.

Hannibal began and Will's eyes fell closed. The bustle of the bar dissolved and all that remained in Will's head was the recitation.

\---

Somehow one whiskey turned into four and the conversation carried on easily in their candlelit corner. Somehow Will had forgotten about the blind date fiasco and in the end, he let Oscar-cum-Hannibal drive him home.

Now he was sat on the edge of his bed, warm and giddy-drunk, thumbing through the dusty "Anthology of Modern Verse" he'd not cracked open in a decade. When he found the poem, he re-read it twice, then bookmarked it with the business card of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Will dreamt that night of a voice speaking to him in a dark crowded room. Low and soft, like a cello string, it told Will about daisies sprouting from a tangle of pale golden hair. They pushed through the frozen ground and blossomed in footprints left in freshly fallen snow.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the [poem](http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/requiescat.html) and the [envelope](https://wmi-production.s3.amazonaws.com/article/58/6611ef5641a1a0b9a2bebe1de1ee4390.jpg) in which Wilde kept his sister's hair.


End file.
